Description :

• Scandent shrubs to tall, woody climbers
• Leaves opposite, shortly petioled or subsessile, obovate, oblong-elliptic or elliptic, often abruptly acuminate; axillary glands 0; stipules 0
• Inflorescence terminal or axillary, consisting of a panicle of few-many-flowered, contracted cymes
• Flowers relatively small, inconspicuous, often greenish
• Calyx small, divided almost to base, eglandular within or rarely with 5 minute glands; sepals 5, imbricate, oblong-lanceolate to ovate-oblong
• Corolla salver-shaped; tube short, widest in middle, hairy without and within, with 5 ligulate scales in mouth, alternating with lobes; lobes spreading or reflexed, ± as long as tube, linear to linear-oblong, overlapping to the right
• Stamens 5, inserted above base of corolla tube; anthers 4-locular, sessile, conniving in a cone, sublinear, apiculate, shortly sagittate with foot of connective produced into a linear appendage which lies in a channel in the anther, with a cushion of hairs at base, polliniferous in upper part only
• Disc cupular, 5-lobed or 5-partite
• Ovary of 2 free carpels, shortly exserted and free from disc; style very short; stigma shortly spindle-shaped with 2-lobed apiculus
• Mericarps 2, follicular, cylindric and slender to spindle-shaped
• Seeds lanceolate, linear or oblong with apical tuft of hairs
• x = 11 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Oncinotis Benth.
  • Bentham: 451 (1849)
  • Stapf: 512 (1907)
  • Codd: 288 (1963)
  • Kupicha: 492 (1985)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 7, Africa and Madagascar
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Oncinotis tenuiloba Stapf (= O. inandensis J.M.Wood & M.S.Evans), KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape border